By Moses Okorie
Nigeria may experience food shortage after the 2026 farming season as many farmers have threatened to quit agricultural practice due to heavy losses, they incurred after the 2025 harvest season as food prices crashed to its lowest ebb in the last five years.
Speaking with NationsPride in Abuja, in an interview conducted across some farming communities in the nation’s capital, they vowed that they are not going into large scale farming in 2026 except the government does something to reduce the cost of farming, and make it commensurate with the fall in prices of food crops.
According to Mrs. Happiness Yohanna, a large-scale farmer living at Pigba Sama village of Apo in Abuja, she said after putting in large sum of money during the 2025 farming season to plan maize, rice and beans, she was not able to reap one-third of the total amount spent.
Her words: “In 2024, a mudu of rice was sold for as much as N3,500 in my area, rice went for as much as N4,000, so by the year 2025, I collected loan to invest in agriculture, and I opened up new fronts in order to have much harvest, unfortunately for me, the price of beans crashed to N500 while rice came down to N700 per mudu.
“With all I suffered to pay for labour, bought seeds, herbicides and pesticides, at the end of the farming season, I just discovered that I did not just labour in vain, but have incurred debt for myself, which I don’t know how to pay. Why then should I embark on farming this year?”
Madam Happiness Yohanna said she is not feeling bad that prices of food items are coming down, but her problem is that other farming and household commodities are constantly on the rise thereby making it impossible for farmers to meet up with their daily needs.
Another farmer at Waru village in the same Apo area, Malam Musa Ibrahim who specializes in beans production, said he too has given up farming until prices of farm inputs also come down just like farm produce. He also cried that 2025 was the worst year for him as he depends largely on proceeds from his agriculture.
Asking a question, he lamented, “Why will the prices of grocery items such of beverages, processed food and petroleum products and transportation fares not come down? I am happy that prices of food crashed, but it has to reflect in other goods and services, otherwise how would farmers survive?”
He commended Nigerians for going into mass farming in 2025, which contributed in the fall in prices of food, but asked the government to do something to alleviate the plights of farmers so that they would continue to produce food sufficient for the citizens’ consumption.
Musa called for subsidy in prices of agricultural inputs including that the government should make farming equipment available to reduce the amount paid to hire labourers.
Other farmers that were sampled said the same thing, calling for quick intervention as some of them are still watching to see if there would be any reason to return to farm ahead of 2026 farming season.
Another farmer from Chafuyi community, Emeka John said farming has assisted him for many years, but he has never seen anything like what happened in 2025 where prices of food crashed in such manner, but he encouraged farmers not to give up in the interest of the nation.
He added that federal government’s intervention was right when prices of food were getting beyond the reach of the common man, which necessitated President Bola Tinubu to order for additional food in order to feed Nigerians.